Hard Hitting Analysis of Steelers Football

Steelers to Face Salary Cap Trouble in New CBA?

This is a little premature to discuss, as the new CBA has yet to be reached and anything, including continuation of the lockout, could happen.

But ESPN’s John Clayton is reporting that the salary cap will likely decline in any new CBA, and he’s listing the Steelers as one of the 7 teams that would be most aversely affected.

Accordingly to Claton, the Steelers are 10 million dollars over the prospective cap. On the surface of things, this does not bode well for the team.

Clayton, for examples, explains that the Steelers could cut half of that gap by parting ways with Flozell Adams.

The conventional wisdom is that the Steelers cannot resign Willie Colon, which means that losing Adams would rob the Steelers of both quantity and quality of depth at offensive tackle.

Likewise, the Steelers need to resign Ike Taylor, and their ability to do so would be compromised by how much they can restructure existing deals and create enough space to ink Taylor.

Kevin Colbert and Art Rooney II have been quite adept at managing the salary cap, and there is no reason to expect this to change.

But given the compressed free agency time frame and a reduced salary cap is going to require some fancy footwork on the part of both men to ensure the Steelers keep Taylor and Adams or Colon in the Black and Gold in 2011.